


Freefall

by Andae



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andae/pseuds/Andae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two things Hawke is good at, and these are lies and firestarting, and none of them is of much use in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freefall

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a part of a longer series focusing on this character, but all I have is a bunch of unfinished stories, and I don't know if I'll ever get around to finishing them. Anyway, this one can stay on its own.

“Do you want to hear a story,” a redheaded woman asks, and Arwel wants to scream.

There’s a fire under his ribs that never seems to go out, it consumes him from inside out inch by inch, burns all the words he’d like to say, all the kindness he’d like to offer. He feels nothing but hard edges inside, hard edges and anger, something that whispers to him in the middle of the night. Then he remembers his father’s teachings and is calm at least until morning.

Bethany’s been chatting happily with the sister, but all he sees is the sun embroidered on her robes, the one that would devour them all if they let it. He’d like to move closer, to listen to the strange lilting voice of this strange woman, but he doesn’t. He stays where he is, leaning against the doorframe so he can watch the twins sitting among other children from the village. Now and then Carver would look at him and smile, a wide, gap-toothed grin, and Arwel would project the air of amused disdain. He’s only there to keep an eye on them, that’s what Mother told him to; he’s only there to smile and wink at Allison, whose attempts at prayer are so transparently half-hearted; he doesn’t care about pretty words and pretty stories, especially under this roof.

His hands feel empty without his staff, which borders on ridiculous, because his father made it only a few weeks ago, but he misses it already, the power that courses through rough wood. Bethany tied red thread and feathers around it, and Carver’s been joking about it ever since, even when Arwel threatened to bash him across the head with the item in question.

“Why don’t you come closer?”

He lifts his head and sees the sister smiling at him. He scowls and grunts and shuffles his feet. He wants to walk across the Chantry floor at the laziest pace possible. It’d feel like a lie, too, a better story than anything this woman could come up with. The day’s been long with harvest, and even though the land his family owns is tiny, it’s more stone than soil, and he feels the exhaustion deep in his bones, in his back and knees. That’s hardly stuff for a story, that’s blistered hands and sun burning his skin red, that’s another day when it’s almost too difficult not to think about destruction. If there’s something Arwel’s good at, it’s firestarting, and you can’t feed anyone with a flame.

He doesn’t go anywhere near them.

 

*

 

"Look what I've got," Arwel's father says as he steps carefully over a garden patch Arwel and Leandra are clearing. Bethany and Carver, who've been watering the vegetables nearby, run to them, their task abandoned. Malcolm has been gone to the farmer's market for most of the morning, and in addition to a few new tools he's been supposed to buy he carries a small bundle.

Leandra sees it first and her eyes widen. "Malcolm, we surely can't..."

“Oh, of course we can,” Malcolm smiles and crouches, showing Arwel the contents of the bundle; a puppy, maybe two months old, with short, coarse wheat-colored hair. Its eyes are bright and curious.

“Is it a mabari?”

Malcolm laughs. “We wouldn’t be able to afford one. It’s a some kind of cross-breed, I think. I also think that the trader believes he’d cheated me.” He produces a silver coin out of thin air, lets it roll across his knuckles before it disappears again. “Alas, he is mistaken.”

Leandra pats the dog’s head a little suspiciously. It shows its tiny, needle-like teeth, but doesn’t bite. Malcolm puts it carefully on the ground, where it takes a few unsteady steps and sits, peering suspiciously at humans crowded over it. Its paws are almost comically large compared to the rest of the body, and one ear droops to the side.

“Don’t they imprint on one person only?”

“Yes.” Malcolm steps away and motions Leandra to do the same. “I thought we could use a dog, and it could imprint on one of the children. For safety, you know.”

The twins are understandably enthusiastic, but the puppy seems rather confused by the whole thing, and while it lets itself be petted and scratched behind the ears, it takes only moderate interest in it. Arwel hopes it’ll take a liking to Bethany, because Carver would be insufferable about it. He doesn’t think he wants a dog for himself. To his surprise, the puppy’s wobbling takes a definite direction after a while. Arwel meets its eyes and shrugs; it’s almost too adorable to behold. When he reaches to pet it, it barks and tries to bite his finger.

“Watch it,” he mutters, trying to push it again towards the twins. “Shoo.”

Malcolm laughs and shakes his head. “I think we have ourselves a winner,” he says as the puppy crawls onto Arwel’s lap.

“Maybe we should’ve got a cat,” Arwel mutters and scowls in Carver’s direction. Carver’s mouth is turning definitely downward and sideways, face dark.

“Maybe we should’ve taught you better manners,” Malcolm says, tousling his hair. “What are you going to name him?”

Arwel hums, scratching the puppy behind the ears absentmindedly. He looks over the garden, behind the fence where the weeds grow high and has an idea. “Thistle,” he says. “It’s prickly enough.”

“That’s stupid,” Carver says, and at the same time Malcolm says, “nice one.”

They soon leave to their respective tasks for the day, the twins to watering the plants, Leandra to weeding and Malcolm to fix the roof which has started leaking again. Arwel takes his end of the garden patch, puts his gloves back on and starts pulling on couch grass. Thistle watches him from where he’s sitting on the grass, transfixed.

“Hey, little one,” Arwel says under his breath. Do you want to hear a story?”

The puppy sinks his teeth in his hand, piercing the skin. Arwel curses, but the puppy looks entirely too pleased with himself to be angry with him for too long.

 

*

 

“Do you want to hear a story,” Arwel’s father says before another coughing fit overwhelms him.

Arwel clamps down on a scream that rises deep from his stomach, grits his teeth and smiles, tightens his fingers around Malcolm’s bony hand. “Is it the one I’ve heard a hundred times before or the one I’ve heard only a dozen times?”

There’s blood on his father’s lips, so he takes a handkerchief that’s more stain than cloth and wipes it. His hand is trembling slightly, and he curls his fingers to hide it, hopes that Malcolm is far too lost to his illness and memories to notice it. He thinks of healing magic, of faint blue sparks in his palm and spirits brushing his mind like cool water, but can’t summon enough power to make it real. They tried, he and Bethany, they hid in the barn and tried for hours. Bethany cried herself to sleep afterwards, too tired for anything more, and he sat in the dark and never dared close his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he’d wake up as himself if he did.

He’s always found destruction easier than healing, for all the good it's done him. Unlike Father, he's never been all that different from other people in Lothering, like them he works the field, weeds the garden, goes to dance with girls and to the Chantry to pray even if the words taste bitter on his tongue. The magic that ignites his dreams is like breathing, and yet it finds no outlet. He's never been afraid of it, not like Bethany, but it slipped through his fingers and let him down in this one thing he needed it for.

"So what about this story?" He smiles, and doesn't think about blood coursing through his veins, red and thick and useless; he doesn't think about sibilant voices that whisper in the night. He can't doubt Father's teachings, that'd be the worst betrayal of all. The Chantry he doesn't believe in, the Circle he finds a travesty and a fate worse than death, perhaps even worse than the loss of self would be - but if there's one thing he's ever believed in, it's family.

There's something in Malcolm's face, a frown or jaw suddenly tightening, that tells Arwel his father is lying. He answers Arwel's smile with an effort, bloody teeth and cracked lips. "Did I tell you how I sneaked into an Orlesian masked ball to elope with your mother?"

Arwel groans and rolls his eyes, and doesn't ask. He's certain that's not the story Malcolm wanted to tell him, but he can't guess what made his father change his mind. There were a lot of such stories, told with panache and surely no small amount of exaggeration, and although Arwel likes to think he knows his father, he can't discern truth from fabrication. He's seen shadows crossing Malcolm's face when he holds his staff (simple enough not to be suspicious, but hidden most of the time nonetheless; sometimes Arwel thinks Malcolm curses his magic as much as he blesses it). There are things they don't speak about much, things that make lines appear on Leandra's forehead. When his parents talk in hushed voices it sometimes feels like looking at strangers.

"You shouldn't talk too much, it drains you," he says instead, and his voice trembles.

Malcolm scoffs and there is a fresh spot of red on his mouth. "I'll be silent when I'm dead."

It can't be too long from now, Arwel thinks and again there's a scream lodged in his throat. It's been too long. His magic is of no use, and there's little they can do with herbs and medicines. The plague's taken too many already and even Elder Miriam shook his head and spoke with Leandra in a too-hushed voice.

"Don't say that," Leandra says from behind Arwel's back, and he gets to his feet so she can sit in the chair by the bed. Her face is pale and drawn with worry, but she's stronger than Arwel, she's always been. He knows that too well as he flees the room, runs outside and breathes in what he feels is the first time in many hours.

He sits by the windmill until dusk. It's where they find him and tell him that his father is dead.

 

*

 

"Do you want to hear a story," Hawke says and grins. It feels like a skull's grimace stuck to his face and he wonders how anyone would mistake it for a genuine expression.

Bethany gives him a look that is part fondness, part exasperation, more of the latter than the former. He's resorted so often to be obnoxious in order to keep them from being terrified that it's a miracle it even works anymore.

They've been living in this transient state for months, watching helplessly as the earth blackened and you could hear the drums at night closer and closer. Water has been scarce, the food even worse, and last night Hawke burned a genlock to ashes as it tried to dump dead bodies in the well. Hawke burned the corpses, too, the closest a Chasind man and a woman in the colors of the king's army would get to a funeral pyre, and wondered if he shouldn't be mourning his brother, too.

Last night the sky was red, a deep hue of arterial blood, and the air was so thick with smoke it was almost impossible to breathe. Hawke wonders, has to wonder, if he hasn't doomed them all. He dreamed of Carver rotting in a pile of corpses somewhere under white stone arches of Ostagar, dreamed of dried blood and corruption spreading black across the skin. They've been asking, asked every soldier and every refugee in the village, but who could remember one man among such destruction.

We need to go, he thinks, next morning at the latest. I'm so sorry, little brother, I should have never let you leave.

"Story?" Bethany prompts. They look at him, Bethany and Mother, brown eyes equally tired, and all three of them know each other well enough to understand how much sometimes you need a distraction. He feels too young for this. Three years ago he was too much of a coward to watch his father die, only half a year ago he wore a passable imitation of a smile and danced with Allison at her wedding, snogged a travelling blacksmith's apprentice behind the Chantry. In three years nobody but his family has called him by his given name.

They take turns watching the road south for darkspawn, for Carver. Thistle is on alert, so thin you can count ribs under his skin, but all four of them look that way now. Hawke’s always been skinny, but now he feels he's nothing more than a collection of bones and sinews, and hunger. There’s nothing but fire in his chest, and although now they don’t care about hiding their magic, it doesn’t feel easier.

When Mother slept through grey hours of the morning Bethany whispered to him that maybe they’d be better off if discovered years ago. At least they’d have stone walls and deep waters of the lake between them and the darkspawn. Maybe they’d let them go to Ostagar with the army and they could watch over Carver, he’d probably got himself into trouble, you know how he is. Hawke doesn’t tell her that if they’d been taken they could just as well carry sun marks on their foreheads, that their brother probably wouldn’t recognize them at all.

The night falls and his dog starts barking before Hawke can speak. Someone pounds at the door, and Hawke can't stop relief and guilt overwhelming him as Leandra hugs his brother tight and sobs.

 

*

 

Walking around Darktown after nightfall isn’t for the faint of heart, but Hawke’s always been what you may call adventurous, or maybe in possession of a self-destructive streak. He’s curious all right, and believes his own luck, or at least believes that after all that happened, ending up in a gutter with his throat slit would be a kind of narrative clumsiness.

The clinic’s almost empty, only a few patients thrash about their cots. It smells of crushed elfroot and other herbs, of sweaty bodies packed together, of rot and illness barely masked by the sharp smell of lye the healer uses to clean the floors. Hawke sneezes and finds himself face to face with a sharp end of a staff before Anders recognizes him.

“My apologies,” the healer says, lowering the weapon. He looks much worse than he did when Hawke last saw him, with his hair hanging around his face in clumps, cheeks hollowed and dark circles under his eyes. Hawke has to fight a sudden urge to give him a sandwich. There’s this thing about healers, that they never give themselves the same amount of attention they give to their patients.

“I should’ve made more noise,” he says and smiles. He keeps his hands empty and out in view, just in case. “Sorry about that. Are you busy?”

“Not particularly, no.” Anders motions to follow him, shows him to a chair by the fire and sits in another. Hawke wraps his cloak tighter around himself. Even for a Fereldan Darktown feels chilly and every breath fills his lungs with smoke.

There are a few pieces of makeshift furniture in Anders’ clinic, wobbly shelves cluttered with jars, pots and bottles, old books, stacks of handwritten notes. In the bowl full of steaming water there are several surgical tools, none of which looks particularly pleasant. The whole room is as clean as you can get in Darktown, probably better.

Anders pours two cups of something that smells like herbal tea from a kettle hung over the fire and offers him one.

“It smells like medicine,” Hawke says, making a face. He sips it nonetheless, burning his tongue in the process. The tea tastes like it’s mostly peppermint and nettle. Anders wraps his hands around his own cup and watches him in silence, but Hawke thinks he can see a half-smile in the corner of his mouth.

“How are you doing? I haven’t seen you around recently.”

“There’s no shortage of work to be done here.” Anders’ words are mild, but with a hint of reproach. “But as I said before, I’ll be happy to help if you need me.”

“Maybe,” Hawke says, figuring that he might as well cut the small talk. “I’ve been planning a trip to Sundermount. There’s something we need to do and we could use the company of a healer.”

Anders blinks, then shrugs. “All right, it’s fine by me.” He smiles faintly. “Everyone needs a change of scenery from time to time. Why Sundermount, if I may ask?”

“I owe a lady a favour,” Hawke says, and grins.

“Oh. There’s more to it, isn’t it?”

“Of course there is. Do you want to hear the story? It has a dragon in it.”

Then someone barges in bleeding all over the floor. Hawke keeps his mouth shut and boils the water, lets Anders work. The healer nods off on the chair afterwards, and Hawke keeps watch over him, unsure about his welcome, but he’s always been rubbish at keeping out of other people’s business. It feels like the least he could do.

 

*

 

“Do you want to hear a story,” Hawke asks and doesn’t wince at how his voice echoes around the house.

They keep the bedroom door and windows open to let in the summer air. It only has the faintest trace of smoke. Hawke still sometimes wakes in the middle of the night and tries to scrub the smell off his hands, his face and hair even though it’s been years since he lived in Lowtown, years since the Blight. With the dwarves and Orana gone for the evening the house seems even emptier than usual.

Anders looks up at him from where he sits at the desk, several books scattered around him. His pile of papers grows larger every day, but Hawke takes care to read nothing from it. He understands acutely that running away is no solution, but every other one is unpalatable. Without his coat, in only a shirt and worn trousers, with hair hanging loose around his face Anders looks younger, but thinner, more tired. Hawke wants to feed him and keep him inside until the storm passes, even if it were to devour them both. Another empty dream, that is.

“One of these days you’re going to turn into Varric,” Anders says with a half-smile. He keeps scribbling words on the page. Hawke fights an urge to grab his quill and snap it in half, maybe set it on fire just to be sure.

“If that comes to pass, you’ll be the first to know,” Hawke mutters. He reaches down to pet the dog, which grunts in his sleep and rolls over. He’s been trying to read a book, but the words swim before his eyes and refuse to turn into anything that makes sense. Kirkwall’s summer is just a bit too hot for him to be comfortable, and cloying atmosphere of inevitable disaster doesn’t help.

“It’s not going to get better, is it?” The question is out of his mouth before it even fully forms in his mind. They’d become rather proficient at ignoring a dragon in the room, but apparently even his powers of denial have their limits.

Anders turns to him with a frown. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” Hawke makes a wide gesture. “The city. You.” Good job, he thinks bitterly, cringing, and carries on. “Us. We’ve been doomed from the start, haven’t we? Whatever we do, it’s going to end in tears, because this city’s tearing itself apart.” It’s going to end in flames, something whispers in his mind, and before it comes to an end you’re going to start quite a few of them yourself.

Anders studies him for a long moment. Then he sighs, shakes his head. “You of all people should have been aware that there is no peace for the likes of us.”

Hawke is silent, and finds himself grieving for the home that still stands.

“I wish I could make it better,” Anders says, quieter, then his face closes and he turns away, again dark and unreadable. If Hawke could, he’d reach inside his soul and mind to tear all the vengeance away, but then he knows only too well that he fell in love with that firestorm, with all the righteous fury and mindless rage, that not all of that he loves is Anders. He knows how unfair it is, but he’s never much cared about fairness when it came to his own heart.

“I wish that, too,” Hawke says, the words ringing hollow to his ears. Of course he’d done that if he could, and yet all he knows, all he is has been shaped by this injustice, and very little remains if you take this away. All his anger, all his family are a result of what the world is, and how fucked up is it. It’s a selfish thought, but again, he’s been trying to learn how to be selfish his whole life and never quite succeeded.

“We could leave,” Hawke says quietly. He doesn’t believe his own words. Anders probably knows that, too.

“You don’t want that, not really, do you?” He’s never been one to humour Hawke, and Hawke thinks it’s Justice, but he’s not sure, he never is.

“I’ve never known when to quit.” Hawke smiles, a crooked and sad thing he’d never wear outside these walls. Sometimes it scares him how much of himself he’s allowed to show Anders, how many layers of deception he’s been trying to strip away, and it also scares him he’ll never be offered the same courtesy, that he can’t be offered the same courtesy.

“We can’t quit, not now. We can’t afford to. Wherever we go, it will be the same, and your name won’t protect you. You are a thorn in their side, because you don’t hide who you are and they can’t touch you.”

“Hiding would make no sense,” Hawke shrugs. “I burned the Arishok with my mind in front of every noble in this city after all, because at the time I somehow didn’t come up with an alternative.” He falls silent for a while. “I used to think it’d change something, you know?”

“We all did.” Anders gets to his feet and sits by his side on the bed, touches his shoulder lightly. Hawke always imagines his fingers leave a tremble in their wake, a little shock of electricity and magic, a faint smell of lyrium in the air. “A Champion and a mage, imagine that. But it’s getting worse, and we cannot remain idle.”

Why not, Hawke wants to ask, haven’t we done enough, haven’t I done enough, and all I received in return was more grief and loss. He knows he’s never done anything for an idea, he’s done everything for his family and it keeps slipping through his fingers. “Do you believe we can win this?”

Anders looks at him and there’s sorrow, there’s madness boiling underneath, there’s tenderness Hawke didn’t expect. “Maybe in a hundred, in a thousand years,” he says softly.

“Is it worth it?” Hawke asks, and it’s like asking a storm if the wildfire was worth it.

Anders pulls him into an embrace, doesn’t say anything for a long time. “I won’t ask you to help me with anything you would find repulsive.”

Please don’t lie to me, Hawke almost says.

 

*

 

“Do you want to hear a story,” Hawke asks.

They sit by a pitiful fire, their backs to a rock. There are woods for miles in every direction, and yet they’ve heard soldiers and templars shouting from not so far away.

Anders smiles faintly and nods.

“They lived happily ever after,” Hawke says.


End file.
